Flustered mad and fast

I’ve decided to write my life story: here we go.

Chapter One: Humble Beginnings

I was born on a Friday in January smack bang in the middle of the coldest winter since 1975. It was 2am. The midwife looked at me and said, this boy’s either gonna be a great saint or one hell of a sinner – there ain’t no in betweens with a child like that. But I just looked up at her and thought, lady, don’tcha know that when there’s only two possible options you should always take the third. The doctor smacked my arse for my impudence. And mummy put me on her tit and gave me a right good feed. The milk was warm but bitter – she’d been on the fags to ease her through the labour and the faggies made me cry. A lot of things made me cry back then.

Chapter Two: Early Childhood

We lived in miners’ houses in Yorkshire. A lot of people don’t believe me when I say we had no hot water till I was eleven; no indoor bathroom or toilet till I was two; and a big black and white television with a coin slot on the side that used to turn off in the middle of programs when the last fifty pee ran out. But all that’s true. I used to get bathed in a tin bath in front of a coal fire. And later on, in the twin tub washing machine. Ee, but we were ‘appy. Childhood is childhood: it’s all normal when you’re in the middle of it; it’s only later you realise what a mad and screwed up affair it all was.

Chapter Three: My Parents

Me dad worked for the coal board and played guitar and me mum had gone and got herself knocked up aged sixteen to some other dude in the doorway of a St John’s Ambulance building. Then she’d run away from home screaming (to her father; he was violent), you’ll never see this baby of mine. He never did. He died when I was two and I set off an alarm clock at his funeral. Me mam and dad used to fight and scream and shout. Sometimes they’d throw cups at each other, grab and pull hair. Me mum told me she once stabbed him with a pair of scissors; fair enough. He whored around and then they broke up when I was six. Din’t bother me: I just took all my hurt and pain and shoved it deep down inside me where I kept it safe for mebbe a decade and a half. Then I shat it all out.

Chapter Four: After That

We lived on Victor Street. We played out: football and throwing stones and putting milk crates in front of high speed trains. Two girls showed me their fannies and one asked if I’d like to touch it but I just said why’s it all red? I watched a lot of Grandstand with my granddad: I watched a lot of quiz shows and horror films and cheesy comedies like ‘Allo ‘Allo and Dad’s Army with him too. He gave me shandies and we kissed each other goodbye right on the lips till I was something like thirteen and then I thought, hm, probably a bit old for this. I ran away from home sometimes, fought violently with my mum. She’d beat me but when I started beating her she didn’t like that as much. Girls at school would call me immature and say, he’s dead bright is Rory but all he wants to do is mess about. I learned to play guitar. I kissed a girl when I was fourteen but I didn’t know what to do and it was all weird tongues and moving your head around and I didn’t bother again for a few years after that. My mum went to bed for about four years during this time; I guess she was depressed. I bullied my brother and my hobbies including rolling dice for hours and hours and days and weeks and months on end (some homemade cricket game). I guess I got into masturbation and shoving various things up my arse, as I hope all boys of that age do. Girls too, I suppose.

Chapter Five: Being A Teenager

And then after like a four year absence my dad came back into my life and I entered into this whole new world of traipsing around Leeds pubs watching him play guitar in blues bands and getting drunk and puking and sliding down walls and staring into toilet bowls. I wore his old leather jacket and even tried a trilby. I got into a band and found a girlfriend and lost my virginity in a rather poor fashion while Russ Abbott played on TV and, man, I got drunk a lot. I drank ten pints my first ever gig and pretty much fell off the stage. I blacked out all the time. I used to go round supping up the half empty glasses in the pub; I thought that’s what you did. Waste not, want not, as my old mother used to say.

Chapter Six: After That

The first day of my second year of A-Levels I overslept and thought, that’s a sign if I ever saw one and, bollocks to that. I was seventeen. I lazed around in bed for a bit and then my mum said, right, here’s what your share of the bills will be, if you don’t go and get a job and pay it you’re out on your arse. I said, yeah whatever. And then two weeks later deadline-day came and she said, give me your key, you’re out on your arse. I handed it over. I went down the pub and moped a bit and drank a lot and then when the pub closed me and my girlfriend walked the streets and tried to find somewhere warm to lay. It was October. We tried the bottom of some stairs. We tried a bus shelter. It was useless. And so we walked all night and then the next day I went to my dad’s guitar shop in Leeds, told him what was what, and he said you can work here and live upstairs (dingy little freezing cold attic room; suited me) and he gave me fifty pounds a week. I ate hotdogs and spaghetti hoops, cheap white bread and big long swiss rolls and went out boozing in Leeds and came staggering home to the shop sometimes passing out right there on the shop floor. Sometimes I’d make it upstairs but forget to lock the door. And sometimes I’d come back with some mates and say, let’s smash up some guitars! And they’d go, yeah! And so we would. Also other bad things besides. But then my dad fired me for double-dealing – son, he said, you’ve made me feel a right cunt for doing this – and I was out on me ear again. Still, he gave me a few weeks to get myself sorted and I bagged another guitar shop job – proper pay – and moved to a cheap room in a mate’s house. First night in: got drunk and shagged a girl that lived there, and that was me and her wrapped up together for the next eighteen months in what turned out to be a seriously rubbish relationship. But I guess we thought it was love. I then got fired and got depressed and sat around in my undies playing Fifa ’95 and drinking four packs and after about a year of that I realised once and for all that I was a big time major loser all filled up with every kind of misery and in desperation I jumped up from the couch and said enough! and bought a plane ticket to America. Thus began my post-adolescent life.

Chapter Seven: America

I went to America: I was there four years, more or less. I did a load of cool stuff but I can’t be arsed to write about it ‘cos I’ve already written a book about it and I’m getting a bit sick of the whole thing. I travelled around. I lived here and there. I got mad and I got drunk and just right round about my 22^nd birthday I reached the lowest point of my life – living in my car, ostracised by pretty much a whole town (massive exaggeration) – and when I stared in the mirror the face that stared back was lonely and sad and rubbish and scared. I thought, hm, m’boy, we’d better get this changed. And so I went hitchhiking for about two years and I got myself saved. I discovered nature. I discovered goodness. And I sobered up and searched for and even thought I found true proper happiness. I got heavily into spirituality. And I also went mad.

Chapter Eight: Spirituality

How long did this last? Life’s such a clear picture up to that point – but then life became internal and full of deeper meaning (some of it made-up) and I get a bit confused. I still travelled all over the place but it was even more willy-nilly and more about following vague signs and ‘my heart’. I went to India. I went around Europe. I went on a guru hunt and that seemed to end when I met a woman called Mother Meera who was living in Germany. She said I probably ought to get a job, find a girl, settle down. Easier said than done. Number one, I didn’t want it. Number two, I was bonkers. I thought I could be the next Jesus, the next Buddha. Sometimes I thought I was: that’s how mad I was. Sure, I could do little miracles and had peace and light and people kind of dug it: but I was a long way off, and totally delusional. I guess I had a lot to learn. In the meantime I lived in a Buddhist meditation centre; followed a so-called saint round Europe eating out of bins; went hither thither on the trail of yogis and healers and holy stones and magic places. And met tons of groovy people basically doing the same. I lived in Paris and Amsterdam and travelled back to Mexico and I didn’t work the whole time, it was all grace, providence, whatever. And then one day I fell in love with a beautiful Frenchwoman who seemed like she was gonna be my Mary Magdalene – but all she did was break my heart, and crush my poor delusional spirit, and send me crashing back down to Earth. She told me when we met we were gonna make a baby. And we did. And the baby was me.

Chapter Nine: After That

And so I went back to Yorkshire with my head and my tail and every other thing I had dangling between my legs – not much really: mainly just tears and sorrow and remorse – and more sobriety but of a different kind – and I went to my mum and said, mum, hug me – and she did, sort of (not really) – and then I cried for a real long time. Like about two months. Ho hum, I’m not Jesus, I said. And, oh motherfuckin’ boy, what an idiot idiot idiot I’ve been. And, how could I be so fucking stupid and lost and embarrassing? And, we’ve got to get it sorted. I went to Ireland. I went to Canada. I fell in love with another girl and she made me want to be normal. I enrolled at university and I gave up meditation and I started to play football instead: lots of football. Good for the grounding. Good for getting back to Earth and being human. I hated uni but I liked football and I dug that I was finally getting my degree. And it worked, too, in getting the girl; in getting the girl of my dreams. I got her. Oh yes: and I had her too.

Chapter Ten: Sophie

I’d met Sophie back in ’99, in Mexico, and had fallen completely in love but she wasn’t having it. No worries: I was accepting everything back then anyways. But a few years later, after the French debacle, I started having these dreams about her, and getting weird messages and I tracked her down on the internet. I went to see her in 2002 but she still wasn’t having it. I went again in 2003 and this time she was. I was into her and she was into me. She came over to England for the summer. We made plans. We lived in China together; and then for a year in Canada. And then she moved to England while I finished my degree and we were proper like living together. We said we’d get married and have a baby. We looked at houses and I even arranged a mortgage and put a bid in on one. I was working as a teacher; this was all around Christmas 2006. Everything was in place: but a month or so later, it was all in tatters. I can’t even explain why; communication breakdown, I guess. I was well upset. But I did my best to accept it and move on. I thought she’d come back to me; I guess she sort of did. But in the meantime I’d met this hot twenty-two year old who lacked the baggage and the heaviness and all that emotional tedium (the tears, the never feeling okay, the always wanting to go over every little thing) and I thought, hm, I’d sure like to give that a try. So I did, and that was that – although I never stopped thinking about her, never let her go as ‘the one’. Not until about six months ago, anyway, when I wrote to her and told her everything – you’re the one, baby, I want you to be with me – and she said, not in so many words, fuck off you weirdo, that was years ago, you’re creeping me out. So much for romance and eternal flames! And so I thought, pff, you probably weren’t that nice anyway: look at me always chasing woman who aren’t nice and don’t really want me (my mum), maybe I should stop. Poor bird! I was ever so smitten. Perhaps I always will be. But perhaps that was all madness and delusion too.

Chapter Eleven: Perlilly

In the meantime I’d moved back to Leeds and was working as the manager of an Oxfam charity shop in Crossgates. I dug the job and I did it for something like fourteen months, which was a personal best for me (next best: eight months). It was during that time that I met Perlilly, all young and fun and sexy and up for everything and cute but also wise and intelligent and emotionally aware (but not messed up/involved with stupid pop-psychology/spirituality) and I was smitten once more, just when I thought those days for me had passed. So we got it on, and fell in love, and had our times, mostly good, and lived together in Oxford, in London, earning money together playing awesome music (she’s a wonderful singer) and for a time I thought she might be the one. But I suppose what I mostly thought was, I’ve bagged a right cracker here and one day she’ll be perfect for me. Yup, the age difference began to tell. She was, alas, all still into things that I’d long left behind, now found dull. Going out, for example. Material things. And after about a year it started to crumble, our differences apparent, no way on. But I’d learned a lot. She’s still my friend. She’s still a cracking person. And at least she talks to me and doesn’t think I’m mental.

Chapter Twelve: Life

Where did all the life go? Last thing I remember I was all gung-ho 23 and having a blast chasing God, chasing girls. I was so young! But it’s twelve bloody years ago: I really don’t know what I’ve done with the time. Uni was a big chunk, I guess: took me from still-young 26 to all-of-a-sudden 30 and – wham! – no more post-adolescent, pretend adult – but really almost getting there baby adult, thirtysomething, time’s a ticking and what are you doing, m’boy? When you’re early twenties nothing really matters: who cares what you do in those years, it’s all fun and exploring and learning and finding out what you like, what you don’t like, you really can’t go wrong. But later on I got this sense that it was somehow important, that I ought to be choosing the right thing, stop wasting time. I say that but I know pretty much all I’ve done is waste time so maybe I’m wrong. Ah, who the fuck knows? All I know is I’m not as mad as I used to be when I was doing the spiritual phase – though I’d sure like it back sometimes – and I’m nowhere near as miserable as I was the first time I was ‘normal’ (at least the spiritual phase cured me of that misery, all that stuffed down and repressed emotions, all that not knowing what life was for, how to deal with anything, how to feel good, find good, do good, etc). So I guess it’s all good in a way. Sometimes I get so stupidly happy I can barely stand myself: and that’s mostly how I am. But every now and then these moods pass over me where I’m filled with boredom and frustration and I think, what the fuck am I doing with my time? and I want to blow up the world, fling fire from my hands, set it all alight and torch the motherfucker and burn it all up. That’s when I write shit like this. That’s when I want to change. That’s how I feel right now. Maybe I should just watch TV. Or get a job. But the last two jobs I had made my soul all real deep down sad and – I shit you not – made my face swell up. Man, I find it hard to do just about anything. And the only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do was write. But I really can’t tell if I’ll ever be any good at that.